Oklahoma Football: Sooners Slide out of BCS Picture with Loss to Texas Tech

The Sooners can blame whomever or whatever they want—the leg of Michael Hunnicutt, the arm of Seth Doege or even the weather—but no amount of finger-pointing can or will change the fact that No. 3 Oklahoma is now on the outside of the BCS National Championship race looking in after a shocking 41-38 loss to Big 12 foe Texas Tech in Norman.

Bob Stoops' boys had shown some vulnerability here and there through their first six games, but somehow managed to shield their flaws behind the cloak that surrounds college football's "invincible" powerhouses.

Unfortunately for the Sooners, not even the name on the front of their jerseys or the interlocking letters on their helmets could hide the fact that they have some serious issues left to tackle. OU looked shaky in its last conference home game, a 38-28 win over Missouri. The Sooners fell behind in early in that game 14-3, before storming back with 28 unanswered points to put the game out of reach for the Tigers. In the end, though, OU's defense surrendered a startling 532 total yards to Mizzou, 394 of which came by way of the arm and legs of James Franklin.

The story was much the same on Saturday night, the biggest difference being the end result. The Sooners struggled to contain Red Raiders quarterback Seth Doege, another passer with shifty feet, who threw for 425 yards and accounted for five of his team's touchdowns. All told, Texas Tech walked away with 596 yards of offense, a number pulled under 600 by a series of kneel-downs by Doege to end the game.

Sooners quarterback and Heisman Trophy contender Landry Jones led the charge to drag his team out from a 31-7 ditch early in the third quarter, throwing for 403 yards and five touchdowns along the way.

In the end, it proved to be too little, too late. The Sooners defense, which performed so valiantly against Florida State and Texas, was nowhere to be found, thereby putting Jones and company in a tough position with so little time to spare.

Not that Oklahoma's offense couldn't have shown up just a little bit earlier, or that Hunnicutt's foot couldn't have been just a bit more accurate.

But, again, it doesn't really matter now that the Sooners' hopes of hoisting the crystal football in New Orleans have all but vanished. The loss—Oklahoma's first at home since 2005—leaves it as the second team to drop from the ranks of the unbeaten on Saturday, joining No. 6 Wisconsin in that dubious category.

One of the two, between No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama, is guaranteed to fall, with those two SEC juggernauts scheduled to face off on November 5th. Stanford, Boise State and Clemson continue to roll right along, while Arkansas and Oregon have put enough distance between themselves and their lone losses to slip back into the BCS conversation.

All of which puts the Sooners in a precarious position. They'll have a golden chance to redeem themselves against an undefeated but overachieving Kansas State club in Manhattan next weekend, and could well end up as the strongest one-loss team in the country if they defeat No. 4 Oklahoma State in the Bedlam Series game to end the season.

Even if the Sooners win out, they need a long list of other events that are completely out of their control to play out in their favor. The odds, then, are stacked tall against Oklahoma's chances of playing for all of the BCS marbles at the end of the season.

Then again, crazy things happen in college football all the time. Just ask OU.